


Idoru - the Miragen collection

by jetsam



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-12
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-11-25 05:16:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/635502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jetsam/pseuds/jetsam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because life isn't predictable.  Ch1 - Riko does not have a crush on Kise,  Ch2 - Midorima is not a softy, Ch3 - Kiyoshi plays with hanafuda but, of course, he's too nice a boy to gamble, Ch4 - The one time Alex came to watch Seirin training, she spent the whole time watching Riko.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Idoru

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Riko absolutely does not have a crush on Kise.

Kise isn’t her type. Really he isn’t. He’s too tall, too young, too blond, too _pretty_ (and is far, far too aware of it).

He also plays basketball, but she likes to think that is beside the point. That’s the only reason she knows who he is – she doesn’t buy the idol magazines or the posters. She’s not above borrowing them on the bus, though. Hyuuga gets them from his sister and brings them along, slipping them into her bag when he empties his locker.

When tournament season finishes, suddenly Kise is around Seirin every night, waiting for Kagami and Kuroko to be free to play street ball. He slips in through the side door, the gallery filling with giggling girls, and leans nonchalantly against the wall of the gym, watching. Apparently he’s happy just to watch, so she leaves him to it, looking over occasionally to check he’s still there. They aren’t working on any surprise strategies, and they have been in Kaijou’s pockets long enough that it does no harm for him to be there.

One evening, she tails along after them and watches them play three-on-three at the street courts, Kagami on one side and Kise on the other, Kuroko switching between the two. There is something splendid about the fluidity of his movements, the smooth flow of his body as he turns and leaps. (Kagami and Kuroko are doing very well, too, but they are hers and she sees them play every day).

The next evening, he doesn’t lurk near the door but comes and sits on the bench with her.

“You need a haircut,” she says, gaze intent on the practice match in front of her. He’d spent every pause in play the previous night brushing it casually out of his eyes. It couldn’t be helping his game.

He laughs, reaches up to touch it. It would be a self-conscious movement in Hyuuga but Kise spends his life in front of the camera.

This time he pauses when they leave. “Are you coming?”

Kagami pulls faces at him behind her back (he is slow on the uptake: she always knows), and Kuroko looks mildly surprised. She takes that as expressions of horror and beams at them. She’s done well. “Hyuuga and I are planning next week’s training sessions tonight.”

Kise is hastily tugged out of the door and Riko shrugs innocently at Hyuuga. Kiyoshi is laughing as he slings an arm around her shoulders.


	2. The planets are aligning for me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is disconcerting to train alongside someone who has so much faith in him (at Teikou they had faith and also knew their limits; Takao seems to honestly believe Midorima doesn’t have limits).

It is not that Midorima has ever allowed himself to be defined by his teammates.  That is something for people with only one talent, or for those who live and die by their social currency.  He is neither, and it has always been something of a relief to leave his basketball kit in his locker and duck back into academics and shougi and the ring of the silence in his ears when he stands in his room and meditates.

 

 

_I can see,_  
 _The planets are aligning for me,_  
 _But I cannot read them,_  
 _For the future's gone,_  
 _And all behind me._

 

It is… strange, though, when they are no longer there (because they were always there, in shougi, in classes, and even large and loud in his mind when he tried to calm it). But Akashi has said that they will meet as enemies and so Midorima does not seek them out in the curious empty period between one school and the next.  And in any case, it has been weeks since he last saw Kuroko.

 

  
_Through this world,_  
 _I am wandering, wandering,_  
 _A soft breeze blowing,_  
 _I am wandering now,_  
 _Through this world,_  
 _I am wandering, wandering,_  
 _These are the days I live now._

Instead he has his training plan and sticks to it.  (He checks his horoscope every morning and adjusts it to suit).  It is not the rhythmic certainty of the Teikou regime but then he has never had much patience for the massed drills, however necessary they are for most players. 

 

He is ready for Shuutoku: his new uniform is neatly ironed and hung in his wardrobe, his new school books are shelved and the old ones packed away, and he has made the commute a couple of times, until it feels natural.  (Kise has released a new advertisement and his face looks down on Midorima from every bus).

 

 

_You said, turn around_  
 _So I cannot see your tears falling,_  
 _You don't make me proud,_  
 _Now I see there is_  
 _A new day dawning._

He did not quite make it to the start of term without looking at a basketball magazine (he does not know quite why he bought it – they are generally inaccurate and unhelpful, and he is not interested in anyone except his teammates anyway).  Akashi’s face stares up at him from the front cover.  It is his face and not his face, and Midorima wonders if this is why they were banished from his sight so soon after the end of the tournament.  Akashi’s eyes are angry, one red, one yellow, with the narrowed look reserved for boring opposition.  Midorima swallows and glares back.  The magazine is opened and folded a different way, relegated to the bottom of his bag.

 

‘Have fun ^_^!’ Kise texts the day before he starts.  Midorima deletes it and wonders if anyone answered.

 

  
_Through this world,_  
 _I am wandering, wandering,_  
 _A soft breeze blowing,_  
 _I am wandering now,_  
 _Through this world,_  
 _I am wandering, wandering,_  
 _These are the days I live now._

Shuutoku is the relief.  The basketball club is entirely different, and it is a shock to find himself at the bottom of the rung (he knows, though, that this is a temporary measure to establish him as a junior member.  Still he feels the anonymity pressing down on him).  The faces are not new to him – how could they be when Teikou crushed so many teams beneath them.  Midorima does not remember any of their names and no one expects him to.  Neither do they object when he stays late to practice, so he has no objection with them. (They are slow, and their basketball predictable, but they work hard and they carry the weight of their school with a grace that surprises him).

 

 

_On nights like these,_  
 _I could fly up to the sky above me,_  
 _Like superman,_  
 _I would change the course_  
 _Of earth below me._

It is at one of these late sessions that he realises that one of the others has been trying to match his training times.  It is a foolish thing to attempt, without years of conditioning, but Takao looks at him with fierce eyes and a set jaw and Midorima doesn’t argue.  It is disconcerting to train alongside someone who has so much faith in him (at Teikou they had faith and also knew their limits; Takao seems to honestly believe Midorima doesn’t have limits).

 

  
_Through this world,_  
 _I am wandering, wandering,_  
 _A soft breeze blowing,_  
 _I am wandering now,_  
 _Through this world,_  
 _I am wandering, wandering,_  
 _These are the days I live now._

It is a whim that leads him to watch Kise’s match against Kuroko.  Probably a whim, though he has been pretending not to have received any of the texts.  Midorima watches them play seriously against each other, watches Kuroko beat Kise makes Midorima and something in Kuroko’s eyes tells him that they are no longer teammates.

 

And he watches and does not turn away, even though he is missing practice at Shuutoku.

 

  
_But I can see,_  
 _The planets are aligning for me,_  
 _And I dare not breathe for then_  
 _The clouds will come and then deny me._

And then tournament season starts and he is Midorima of Shuutoku, and he knows (if no one else does) that he is still Midorima of Teikou.

 

Akashi is still their captain and they come when he calls, but it is no longer Teikou’s captain Akashi that summons them, but a stranger with his face and mismatched eyes, who calls him Shintarou and does not invite the same familiarity in return.


	3. The Moon and the Sake Cup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kiyoshi plays with hanafuda but, of course, he's too nice a boy to gamble...

Kiyoshi isn’t an inpatient at the hospital for very long. The staff would never say so, but they are almost disappointed, because he is charming to them and spends his days sitting with some of the elderly gentlemen on the ward, playing card games for hours on end.

“Does anyone play koi-koi?” he’d asked his first day there, shuffling a well-worn pack of hanafuda cards absently. “None of my friends at school will play with me…”

None of the staff play, so they do not know about the league tables kept meticulously in a notebook under Kanou-san’s pillow, or how Kiyoshi somehow always comes in on top. Nor do they know that none of his classmates will come near him at school if he has a pack of cards to hand, because it always results in an embarrassing loss and an even more embarrassing forfeit.

“Unlucky, Ochi-san! I seem to have scraped through. Would you like to play again?”

They do see how he entertains them all with shuffling tricks between games, how he has five packs of cards with him, all beautifully drawn, and how he always beams at his opponents when he starts to play.

“Let’s have fu~un!”

Kiyoshi leaves the hospital with twelve packs of cards, one bottle of contraband sake, and a weekly appointment to play Kanou-san in a bar in a not-so-good part of town.


	4. Reach for the Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one time Alex came to watch Seirin training, she spent the whole time watching Riko.

The one time Alex came to watch Seirin training, she spent the whole time watching Riko. The boys were too busy to notice, thankfully, but Riko couldn’t help but twitch every time her focus on their drills slipped.

“Well?” she snapped, twirling a spare ball on the index finger of one hand, the other on her hip.

Alex laughed and bounced up to drape an arm around her shoulders. Riko gritted her teeth. She was short, yes, and slightly built, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be manhandled like an elementary school kid. “Have you ever considered playing yourself?”

Riko blinked, and the ball dropped to the floor with a thud. She broke free and caught it before the second bounce, face red. “What?”

“I’m serious – you’re fit, clever, you know the game. Why don’t you play yourself?”

“Apart from keeping the idiots out of trouble?” Riko asked, hoping to distract her. It didn’t work: Alex just quirked an eyebrow and kept looking at her.

“Come on - show me what you’ve got.”

Riko paused, glanced up at the hoop above Alex’s head. There are no lines around this one – it’s just a spare for shooting practice – but it will do. A deep breath, and then the ball was silently looping in, not even brushing the rim. She shrugged.

“That much – that’s just practice. I’m not very tall, and not very fast.”

“That isn’t necessarily a gamekiller.”

“And I know I would never be able to aim for number one in Japan,” Riko said, and turned a little so she could watch Kagami dunk. “But they can.”

For a moment, Alex’s eyes were a little misty, then she caught Riko’s hand in hers and dragged her outside into the empty playground. “Come on, we’re neither of us going to be number one now, but we can still play.”

“But… practice….”

“Will take care of itself one evening – or don’t you trust those boys? You can look on this as another kind of coaching session, if you want. Among other things, I am a damn good coach.”

Riko wavered, Alex’s hand still holding hers firmly. When she nodded, Alex kissed her and stole the ball while she was spluttering.

“Hey, you can’t….”

Alex laughed. “Come and get it.”


End file.
